Who are SMC? They are linked to Sense about Science. Simon can probably tell you more. My take is the original idea was reasonable – scientists like him were under attack from what might loosely called activists. He probably had much less hostility to cope with than I have had defending ECT. But the idea was to ensure that proper science got a hearing.

SMC began in 2002 in part to contain negative media coverage of GM Foods which seemed bad for business in UK PLC. One of the other factors cited early on was the rough time certain academics such as Simon Wessely were getting when they put forward views about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). SMC was and is closely linked to Sense about Science, which began at the same time. They had key founders in common.

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Their commitment to CFS has been pretty constant too. As one of the comments on What’s going on Here mentions, SMC have recently co-ordinated comments on the PACE study of CFS. This is a British study that has generated more interest in the US than the UK, in part because the authors have resolutely refused to part with the data and because there has been outcome switching worthy of Study 329.

But you don’t do your corner any good by going into third shooter and grassy knoll territory.

Ok. Hope you are in Berlin. Shorter and I will be downing a few Steins. I hope you will be there

Simon

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Looks like I missed out on a good session with Shorter and Simon . They were just round the corner and they didn't let me know!

Classic Wessely - accuse you opponent of being a conspiracy-theorist, then refer to matey drinks, bottles of red wine etc instead of addressing substantive points. Only thing missing was "This isn't you, David!" I reckon it wouldn't be too hard to write an algorithm to produce a Wessely-style response to any criticism. Now there's an idea for my next programming project ...

The comments by someone called TM are good. I haven't read all of it as I there is enough ME&PACE/Wessely scandal to keep me preoccupied with.

What I find fascinating is that mental health patients and TM states this himself want talk therapies (CBT) but were only given drugs and no other options. I have heard this before that mental health patients have to really fight to get talk therapies such as CBT and are refused but are only given physical biological anti-depressant drugs.

So mental health patients only get biological drugs even when they want psychotherapies (CBT).
And physical neurological ME patients get psychotherapies (CBT) when we don't require it.

This is topsy turvy.

Simon Wessely has a lot to answer for.

The money aspect is very interesting. This really proves he is a corporate shill.

From 1995 to the present I have organised an annual Guest Lecture slot with contributions from Edward Shorter, Richard Dawkins, Anthony Clare, Roy Porter, Simon Wessely, David Weatherall, David Goldberg & others.

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Co-holder with Professor E Shorter, Dept of History, U of Toronto, of a Canadian Institutes of Health Research grant 116654: “The renewal of the pharmacopoeia for mood and anxiety 1966-2003”, $312,000: 1.10.03 to 30.09.06.

I was not aware of the depth of controversy with psychiatrists and big Pharma for mental health./

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I think it's part of the wider difficulties psychology and psychiatry are having with the so-called replication problem. My view is that by their nature these fields are more prone to junk science. I think there are several reasons for this:

It's much easier/cheaper to do a psychological study and with much less pre-registration, so publication bias effects are much higher

In other fields of medicine there are more objective measures (it's hard in oncology to hide the fact that, despite your supposed miracle cure, your patients are still dropping dead)

Most importantly, in other fields of medicine, study subjects and patients are believed. Whereas if you're a Freudian, you can defend your work with 'well of course they would deny wanting to sleep with their own mothers'. Even worse, in psychiatry you can portray your critics as mentally unwell or 'resistant'. Your poor results are no longer your fault, but the fault of your patients who don't want to get better. Or you can state that in fact you get brilliant results and it's only a few psychopaths who deny it.

This is not to say that all psychology/psychiatry is junk science; it's just that a significant portion of it is, and the normal scientific checks and balances - which aren't perfect anyway - seem to be much less effective here.

I think it's part of the wider difficulties psychology and psychiatry are having with the so-called replication problem. My view is that by their nature these fields are more prone to junk science. I think there are several reasons for this:

It's much easier/cheaper to do a psychological study and with much less pre-registration, so publication bias effects are much higher

In other fields of medicine there are more objective measures (it's hard in oncology to hide the fact that, despite your supposed miracle cure, your patients are still dropping dead)

Most importantly, in other fields of medicine, study subjects and patients are believed. Whereas if you're a Freudian, you can defend your work with 'well of course they would deny wanting to sleep with their own mothers'. Even worse, in psychiatry you can portray your critics as mentally unwell or 'resistant'. Your poor results are no longer your fault, but the fault of your patients who don't want to get better. Or you can state that in fact you get brilliant results and it's only a few psychopaths who deny it.

This is not to say that all psychology/psychiatry is junk science; it's just that a significant portion of it is, and the normal scientific checks and balances - which aren't perfect anyway - seem to be much less effective here.

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I think there is also the fact that psychiatry often does have to deal with false perceptions in people, and tries to help them overcome these. Extremely low self-esteem would be an example, where the person's perceptions of their own inadequacies are largely false. From another life a long time ago, I know what I am talking about here. Fixing this, with or without external help, is essentially about correcting those false self-perceptions, and the flawed behaviours that accompany them.

So good psychiatry/psychology is nonetheless rooted in changing people's perceptions and behaviours. In effect it is a tool in the psychiatrists toolkit, which like all tools, can be used for good or bad. The tool is not at fault - helping people to modify their perceptions and behaviours is perfectly valid and beneficial when this tool is properly used.

It is the abuse of this tool that is abominable, and the those who use it abusively are the abominations. The tool is not the problem, just the people who misuse it.

I think it is also true that psychiatry lives in a largely subjective world, and psychiatrists have deluded themselves (somewhat ironically) into thinking subjectivity is more important that objectivity. That may be true for conditions where subjectivity is core to the issue anyway (such as for low self esteem), but not where physical problems are paramount ... they should basically just keep their long noses out of these conditions!